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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2015
A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
“The Economic Quadrangle” is now the focus of Asia … as the economic place for consumers who demand more choices for shopping and excursion. Also investors, businessmen and manufacturers who are intent to expand their trading, and investment can aim at increasing their benefits. … We are ready for those investors, who are aiming for success, and profits, by cooperating with the Lao People's Democratic Republic. This is a golden opportunity in doing business, in the area full of natural resources and labour with lower wages. Therefore we can assure you of stability and achievement in business. (The Economic Quadrangle Joint Development Corporation, promotional brochure, 1996)
The Economic Quadrangle has become a popular motif in discussions of Southeast Asia's northern borderlands. For its proponents in international development organizations, national governments, and regional chambers of commerce, the Quadrangle is an ambitious vision of liberalized economic integration across national borders and rugged terrain. Creation of transport linkages between the expanding economies of northern Thailand and southern China via the hinterlands of Myanmar and Laos is promoted as a sure path to regional development and prosperity. In the tawdry tourist stalls where the borders of Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos meet on the Upper Mekong, Economic Quadrangle tee-shirts (four flags and a river of blue) are now sold alongside the opium memorabilia and Golden Triangle kitsch (three flags and a poppy) of an earlier socio-geometric era. A new frontier, we are told, is opening up: a deregulated Upper Mekong corridor, a new era for the borderlands.
The Economic Quadrangle Joint Development Corporation — a joint venture between the Lao government and a northern Thai construction firm — is one of the most ambitious and optimistic proponents of this new era. It is marketing an extraordinary future for northwestern Laos, one of the “quarters” of the Quadrangle and the focus of this chapter. The company's latest promotional brochure features a glowing, golden map of northwestern Laos, flanked by glossy pictures of investment opportunities, laid out to tempt the Thai entrepreneur.
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